Spontaneous Stochasticity Amplifies Even Thermal Noise to the Largest Scales of Turbulence in a Few Eddy Turnover Times.

How predictable are turbulent flows? Here, we use theoretical estimates and shell model simulations to argue that Eulerian spontaneous stochasticity, a manifestation of the nonuniqueness of the solutions to the Euler equation that is conjectured to occur in Navier-Stokes turbulence at high Reynolds numbers, leads to universal statistics at finite times, not just at infinite time as for standard chaos. These universal statistics are predictable, even though individual flow realizations are not. Any small-scale noise vanishing slowly enough with increasing Reynolds number can trigger spontaneous stochasticity, and here we show that thermal noise alone, in the absence of any larger disturbances, would suffice.

Dissipation-range fluid turbulence and thermal noise.

We revisit the issue of whether thermal fluctuations are relevant for incompressible fluid turbulence and estimate the scale at which they become important. As anticipated by Betchov in a prescient series of works more than six decades ago, this scale is about equal to the Kolmogorov length, even though that is several orders of magnitude above the mean free path. This result implies that the deterministic version of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equation is inadequate to describe the dissipation range of turbulence in molecular fluids.

The Onsager theory of wall-bounded turbulence and Taylor's momentum anomaly.

We discuss the Onsager theory of wall-bounded turbulence, analysing the momentum dissipation anomaly hypothesized by Taylor. Turbulent drag laws observed with both smooth and rough walls imply ultraviolet divergences of velocity gradients. These are eliminated by a coarse-graining operation, filtering out small-scale eddies and windowing out near-wall eddies, thus introducing two arbitrary regularization length-scales.

Inertial-Range Reconnection in Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence and in the Solar Wind.

In situ spacecraft data on the solar wind show events identified as magnetic reconnection with wide outflows and extended "X lines," 10(3)-10(4) times ion scales. To understand the role of turbulence at these scales, we make a case study of an inertial-range reconnection event in a magnetohydrodynamic simulation. We observe stochastic wandering of field lines in space, breakdown of standard magnetic flux freezing due to Richardson dispersion, and a broadened reconnection zone containing many current sheets.

Turbulent reconnection and its implications.

Magnetic reconnection is a process of magnetic field topology change, which is one of the most fundamental processes happening in magnetized plasmas. In most astrophysical environments, the Reynolds numbers corresponding to plasma flows are large and therefore the transition to turbulence is inevitable. This turbulence, which can be pre-existing or driven by magnetic reconnection itself, must be taken into account for any theory of magnetic reconnection that attempts to describe the process in the aforementioned environments.

Diffusion approximation in turbulent two-particle dispersion.

We solve an inverse problem for fluid particle pair statistics: we show that a time sequence of probability density functions (PDFs) of separations can be exactly reproduced by solving the diffusion equation with a suitable time-dependent diffusivity. The diffusivity tensor is given by a time integral of a conditional Lagrangian velocity structure function, weighted by a ratio of PDFs. Physical hypotheses for hydrodynamic turbulence (sweeping, short memory, mean-field) yield simpler integral formulas, including one of Kraichnan and Lundgren (K-L).

Flux-freezing breakdown in high-conductivity magnetohydrodynamic turbulence.

The idea of 'frozen-in' magnetic field lines for ideal plasmas is useful to explain diverse astrophysical phenomena, for example the shedding of excess angular momentum from protostars by twisting of field lines frozen into the interstellar medium. Frozen-in field lines, however, preclude the rapid changes in magnetic topology observed at high conductivities, as in solar flares. Microphysical plasma processes are a proposed explanation of the observed high rates, but it is an open question whether such processes can rapidly reconnect astrophysical flux structures much greater in extent than several thousand ion gyroradii.

Suppression of particle dispersion by sweeping effects in synthetic turbulence.

Synthetic models of Eulerian turbulence like so-called kinematic simulations (KS) are often used as computational shortcuts for studying Lagrangian properties of turbulence. These models have been criticized by Thomson and Devenish (2005), who argued on physical grounds that sweeping decorrelation effects suppress pair dispersion in such models. We derive analytical results for Eulerian turbulence modeled by Gaussian random fields, in particular for the case with zero mean velocity.

Synchronization of chaos in fully developed turbulence.

We investigate chaos synchronization of small-scale motions in the three-dimensional turbulent energy cascade, via pseudospectral simulations of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. The modes of the turbulent velocity field below about 20 Kolmogorov dissipation lengths are found to be slaved to the chaotic dynamics of larger-scale modes. The dynamics of all dissipation-range modes can be recovered to full numerical precision by solving small-scale dynamical equations with the given large-scale solution as an input, regardless of initial condition.

Stochastic flux freezing and magnetic dynamo.

Magnetic flux conservation in turbulent plasmas at high magnetic Reynolds numbers is argued neither to hold in the conventional sense nor to be entirely broken, but instead to be valid in a statistical sense associated to the "spontaneous stochasticity" of Lagrangian particle trajectories. The latter phenomenon is due to the explosive separation of particles undergoing turbulent Richardson diffusion, which leads to a breakdown of Laplacian determinism for classical dynamics. Empirical evidence is presented for spontaneous stochasticity, including numerical results.

Fluctuation dynamo and turbulent induction at small Prandtl number.

We study the Lagrangian mechanism of the fluctuation dynamo at zero Prandtl number and infinite magnetic Reynolds number, in the Kazantsev-Kraichnan model of white-noise advection. With a rough velocity field corresponding to a turbulent inertial range, flux freezing holds only in a stochastic sense. We show that field lines arriving to the same point which were initially separated by many resistive lengths are important to the dynamo.

Scale locality of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence.

We investigate the scale locality of cascades of conserved invariants at high kinetic and magnetic Reynold's numbers in the "inertial-inductive range" of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence, where velocity and magnetic field increments exhibit suitable power-law scaling. We prove that fluxes of total energy and cross helicity-or, equivalently, fluxes of Elsässer energies-are dominated by the contributions of local triads. Flux of magnetic helicity may be dominated by nonlocal triads.

Matrix exponential-based closures for the turbulent subgrid-scale stress tensor.

Two approaches for closing the turbulence subgrid-scale stress tensor in terms of matrix exponentials are introduced and compared. The first approach is based on a formal solution of the stress transport equation in which the production terms can be integrated exactly in terms of matrix exponentials. This formal solution of the subgrid-scale stress transport equation is shown to be useful to explore special cases, such as the response to constant velocity gradient, but neglecting pressure-strain correlations and diffusion effects.

Equation-free implementation of statistical moment closures.

We present a general numerical scheme for the practical implementation of statistical moment closures suitable for modeling complex, large-scale, nonlinear systems. Building on recently developed equation-free methods, this approach numerically integrates the closure dynamics, the equations of which may not even be available in closed form. Although closure dynamics introduce statistical assumptions of unknown validity, they can have significant computational advantages as they typically have fewer degrees of freedom and may be much less stiff than the original detailed model.

Cascade of circulations in fluid turbulence.

Kelvin's theorem on conservation of circulations is an essential ingredient of Taylor's theory of turbulent energy dissipation by the process of vortex-line stretching. In previous work, we have proposed a nonlinear mechanism for the breakdown of Kelvin's theorem in ideal turbulence at infinite Reynolds number. We develop here a detailed physical theory of this cascade of circulations.

Is the Kelvin theorem valid for high Reynolds number turbulence?

The Kelvin-Helmholtz theorem on conservation of circulation is supposed to hold for ideal inviscid fluids and is believed to be play a crucial role in turbulent phenomena. However, this expectation does not take into account singularities in turbulent velocity fields at infinite Reynolds number. We present evidence from numerical simulations for the breakdown of the classical Kelvin theorem in the three-dimensional turbulent energy cascade.

Subgrid-scale modeling of helicity and energy dissipation in helical turbulence.

The subgrid-scale (SGS) modeling of helical, isotropic turbulence in large eddy simulation is investigated by quantifying rates of helicity and energy cascade. Assuming Kolmogorov spectra, the Smagorinsky model with its traditional coefficient is shown to underestimate the helicity dissipation rate by about 40%. Several two-term helical models are proposed with the model coefficients calculated from simultaneous energy and helicity dissipation balance.

Physical mechanism of the two-dimensional inverse energy cascade.

We study the physical mechanisms of the two-dimensional inverse energy cascade using theory, numerics, and experiment. Kraichnan's prediction of a -5/3 spectrum with constant, negative energy flux is verified in our simulations of 2D Navier-Stokes equations. We observe a similar but shorter range of inverse cascade in laboratory experiments.

Physical mechanism of the two-dimensional enstrophy cascade.

In two-dimensional turbulence, irreversible forward transfer of enstrophy requires anticorrelation of the turbulent vorticity transport vector and the inertial-range vorticity gradient. We investigate the basic mechanism by numerical simulation of the forced Navier-Stokes equation. In particular, we obtain the probability distributions of the local enstrophy flux and of the alignment angle between vorticity gradient and transport vector.

Recovering isotropic statistics in turbulence simulations: the Kolmogorov 4/5th law.

One of the main benchmarks in direct numerical simulations of three-dimensional turbulence is the Kolmogorov prediction for third-order structure functions with homogeneous and isotropic statistics in the infinite Reynolds number limit. Previous direct numerical simulations (DNS) techniques to obtain isotropic statistics have relied on time-averaging structure functions in a few directions over many eddy-turnover times, using forcing schemes carefully constructed to generate isotropic data. Motivated by recent theoretical work, which removes isotropy requirements by spherically averaging the structure functions over all directions, we will present results which supplement long-time averaging by angle-averaging over up to 73 directions from a single flow snapshot.

Kolmogorov's third hypothesis and turbulent sign statistics.

The breakdown of turbulent eddies can be characterized by sets of "multipliers," defined as ratios of velocity increments at successively smaller scales. These quantities were introduced by Kolmogorov, who hypothesized their self-similar statistics and independence at distant scales. Here we report experimental and numerical results on the statistics of these multipliers, for both their magnitude and sign.

Intermittency in the joint cascade of energy and helicity.

The statistics of the energy and helicity fluxes in isotropic turbulence are studied using high resolution direct numerical simulation. The scaling exponents of the energy flux agree with those of the transverse velocity structure functions through refined similarity hypothesis, consistent with Kraichnan's prediction. The helicity flux is even more intermittent than the energy flux.

Universal decay of scalar turbulence.

The asymptotic decay of passive scalar fields is solved analytically for the Kraichnan model, where the velocity has a short correlation time. At long times, two universality classes are found, both characterized by a distribution of the scalar-generally non-Gaussian-with global self-similar evolution in time. Analogous behavior is found numerically with a more realistic flow resulting from an inverse energy cascade.

Fluctuation-response relations for multitime correlations.

We show that time-correlation functions of arbitrary order for any random variable in a statistical dynamical system can be calculated as higher-order response functions of the mean history of the variable. The response is to a "control term" added as a modification to the master equation for statistical distributions. The proof of the relations is based upon a variational characterization of the generating functional of the time correlations.